In my case, I think it probably has to do with the fact that they’re flying in the air, and they need to be as lightweight as humanly possible in order to fly high and better, and that adding armor just weighs them down. Tanks, on the other hand, are ground vehicles, so they’re not as encumbered by their own armor as warplanes and whatever armor they could have equipped themselves with.
Right?
In: Engineering
Just as you stated, armor on a plane means more weight which reduces range and maneuverability. Especially these days, fighting aircraft rely on a combination of weapons range, speed, stealth, and electronic countermeasures to prevent being hit in the first place.
Missiles don’t even try to hit their target. They just explode near it, and the shrapnel does all the work. More weight = more fuel = more space needed for gas = less space for armor = need more space for life support.
It also doesn’t really matter if a plane takes a hit, even a modern one, if the pilot is intact, and the wings are still on the jet. They can still glide down if needed.
In the instance of tanks, it is also dependent on the terrain. We discovered in Afghanistan that, unlike Iraq, Korea, and Europe, tanks are useless. You just get stuck in the mountains. The soviets fell into that trap as well- we adapted by developing specialized APCs to protect against IEDs and to navigate terrain, since we didn’t have tanks to fight anyway.
You can look at WW2 specifically for a difference in ‘armor vs speed vs aeronautics’ with how visceral dogfights were. Now, air combat is done out of visual range in most instances, and our best tactic for unarmed planes is ‘run away fast’.
You’ve got the right idea.
In general a plane survives by evading defenses, either by showing up too fast for defenses to respond, by flying too high or fast for defenses to react to, by hiding from enemy radar, or by being nimble enough to outmaneuver enemy planes (back when dogfighting was a thing). These days with modern missile technology they also survive by simply engaging from so far away that defenses can’t respond.
Tanks also try to be reasonably fast and hidden, but ultimately they’re much more likely to take direct hits that they need to survive. The armor they carry definitely impacts their maneuverability and range, but less so than aircraft.
Some aircraft roles can’t rely on all of the traditional capabilities of aircraft to survive so they do rely on armor. That’s mostly true of the “Close Air Support” role which is effectively a flying tank. The A-10 “Warthog” is the quintessential example of this role, and was designed with survivability in mind. You’ll often see references to a “titanium bathtub” that surrounded the cockpit. The rest of the plane was designed to survive enemy fire by building in redundancy and the ability to sustain damage without failure–fuel tanks were surrounded with a foam that would seal bullet holes. Close Air Support aircraft often have to spend extended periods of time flying over the same area, ready to engage enemies, then they engage at low altitude where ground-based defenses have a reasonable shot at returning fire, so all of this emphasis on surviving damage is important.
There were some planes that had armor, but for most planes speed is life and the armor isn’t helpful against dedicated fighters. If a fighter with 4 20mm cannons, or one with a 37mm or bigger gets on your tail and you can’t shake them then it doesn’t particularly matter how much armor you have, you’re going to lose so its more important to be able to get away from the enemy fighter than to take the hits. Ground attack planes are generally armored because they’re going to make a quick swing through enemy fire and then be out of it, they just need to last for their strafing run, not through sustained fire that’s chasing them
Tanks are slow with a slow fire rate. Evasion isn’t particularly feasible when 100 tanks have to roll across a field into enemy fire so you want the front to be able to take the hit, but even on tanks there are limits to how much armor you can put on it and still have a good tank. Tanks are usually fairly lightly armored on top and in the rear with a decent reduction in armor on the sides. The thickest parts of the armor are going to be the mantle(the big part around the cannon), the front of the turret, and the front glacis plate(the pointy front end) as these are the most likely places for the tank to get hit, but its still only feasible to armor those points against most, but not all threats.
Airplanes’ best defense is the ability to not get hit.
Enough armor to stop a .50 round or a missile would be impractical to apply to most of the plane, and is reserved for certain parts of the vehicle.
You’ve pretty much answered your own question, yes. A lighter plane could fly better than a heavy one.
Another thing to consider is fuel and ammo. The lighter a plane, the more fuel and ammo they could carry, and thus the longer they could stay in the air and fight. Airstrips were often not that close to the battlefields, so the plane had to use a good amount of fuel to get there and back. Planes would be somewhat useless if they were so heavy, that they could only engage in combat for a couple of minutes, then turn back. Or, they only had enough ammo to shoot for a few seconds.
It is much easier to refuel and resupply a tank during combat. If a tank ran out of fuel, it could still shoot and provide cover, and at least draw fire from the enemy. Also, a plane that runs out of fuel crashes. A tank that runs out of fuel only become a better target, but isn’t guaranteed destruction. All it would take is a truck to come up to the tank in the fuel to refuel it and re-arm it, and now they are good to go again.
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